Cyclura rileyi

Appearance

There are three subspecies: the Acklins ground iguana (Cyclura rileyi nuchalis), the White Cay iguana (Cyclura rileyi cristata), and the nominotypical subspecies (Cyclura rileyi rileyi).

Range and habitat

Once inhabiting all the large islands of the Bahamas, today C. Rileyi is confined to six populations in small remote cays of three island groups: San Salvador Island, Acklins, and Exuma. A study in 1995 estimated there were between 426 and 639 specimens left in the wild, and that this number has likely been reduced since much of their habitat was destroyed in 1999 by Hurricane Floyd. The three island groups, each harboring its own subspecies, are on separate banks and were not connected during the last glacial period when water levels were 100 m (330 ft) lower than they are at present.

The species is native to three island groups in the Bahamas, and is in decline due to habitat encroachment from human development and predation by feral dogs and cats. While the island's natives often used iguanas as food and funerary offerings in pre-colonial times, man's largest-scale devastation to these animals was as a result of clear-cutting forests to create plantations as well as the introduction of non-native species.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

Like all Cyclura species, the San Salvador rock iguana's diet is primarily herbivorous, 95% of that comes from consuming leaves, flowers and fruits from 7 different plant species such as seaside rock shrub (Rachicallis americana), and erect prickly pear (Opuntia stricta). This diet is very rarely supplemented with insect larvae, crabs, slugs, dead birds and fungi.

In crisis

Introduced black rats, raccoons, feral dogs, mongoose, hogs, and cats have taken their toll on the population by direct predation, as have the larvae of a moth (Cactoblastis cactorum), introduced decades ago to the Caribbean, that are rapidly devastating prickly-pear cacti, an important food source for the iguanas. The Guana Cay population has been reduced to less than 24 individual animals. Other threats by humans include tourists trampling iguanas' nests, iguanas contracting disease from eating human garbage, and illicit smuggling for the pet trade.

As development increases on the islands and further isolates populations, these animals will be threatened by lack of gene flow between the cays.

Cyclura rileyi is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Cyclura rileyi, Wikidata item Q602268. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.